“You Gormless Tosser!” Zombie Game Review: Killing Floor

Strictly speaking, the waves upon waves of zombies that you’re shooting at in Tripwire Interactive’s Killing Floor are actually “specimens.” They’re the results of the typical experimentation gone wrong: Horzine Biotech, a London-based company, has been cloning humans and manipulating their genes, turning them into super-powered mutant zombies. And one day, a lab tech must have forgotten to lock the door or something, and the whole lot of them poured out into the streets and began munching on everyone they could see. The zombies spread throughout London and eventually the rest of England, destroying basically the entire country’s population except for an elite group of British Army soldiers and Special Branch police officers, who are responsible for killing every last one of the undead menace.

I’ll admit it’s not a very original plot; in fact, this game has more than a few issues that keep it from being as popular as Left 4 Dead. The graphics aren’t that great, for example, and the voice acting (of which there are examples throughout this post) is so horrible that it’s funny. Some people complain about the lack of plot and the absence of specific aims or goals for the characters, but for me that’s what makes the game so awesome: you’re strictly just fighting for your survival in the midst of the zombie apocalypse.

Do something or I’m brown bread!

Killing Floor is a co-op game, meaning that you can (and should, because it’s a lot more fun) play online. The average team consists of six players, and especially on harder difficulties it’s necessary to work with your teammates and watch each other’s backs, otherwise everyone will die very quickly. The team aspect of the game is what makes the game so interesting, especially when you have a good mix of perks.

Who do you think you are, bleeding Action Man?

Perks, or “classes” as other gamers might think of them, really define the gameplay of Killing Floor. Each perk has its own set of weapons (for which they get discounts) and other heightened abilities. There are seven of them for players to choose from (and I would love to go more in-depth on each of them but you guys would leave after the first one, I’m sure):

Field Medic – by far the most useful perk, Medics run around healing their fellow teammates.

Support Specialist – better known as the shotgun perk, these guys are really good at taking down hordes of less powerful zombies.

Sharpshooter – weapons in this perk, like the crossbow, are meant for quick, precise, and extremely effective headshots.

Commando – these guys can really go to town on the zombies with their assault rifles, and are capable of seeing how much health each zombie has left

Berserker – otherwise known as the melee perk, Berserkers rarely use guns, and instead chop off zombie heads with fire axes and katanas.

Firebug – give a Firebug a flamethrower, and you’ll have flaming zombies running around all over the place in no time.

Demolitions – really useful for when want to blow off a lot of steam by blowing up zombies with grenade launchers and pipe bombs.

You’re all fur coat, no knickers bitches!

Another interesting aspect of this game is the wide variety of zombies that are trying to kill you. They range from the Clot, which is the easiest to kill but are dangerous if they get a hold of you, to the Stalker, which is invisible to all perks but Commandos, to the Scrake, which comes at you with a chainsaw, and a bunch more in between. These all lead up to the Patriarch, the mutated personage of the former CEO of Horzine Biotech which can only be killed by a collective effort from the entire team.

I’m bleeding knackered!

I could write about Killing Floor for hours. Despite its flaws, it’s possibly the best zombie game I’ve ever played. Once I got used to the gameplay and the need to level perks, I enjoyed it much more than Left 4 Dead or Resident Evil. It’s a fantastic way to relieve stress at the end of the day, but there’s also so much strategy involved in completing a game and being a good player that it can become much more than that. It’s a relatively cheap game for what you get out of it: endless waves of zombies, the satisfaction of leveling up a perk, trash talking your friends (and enemies) online, pretending to have a British accent, hours of entertainment…and did I mention the endless waves of zombies?